Step 11Installing the power MOSFETs.

The MOSFETs are soldered in with their metal tabs facing the side of the PCB with the diode as shown. It helps to solder the middle lead of each, then carefully line them all up before soldering the other leads.

Step 12Fitting the processor.

The PIC is the chip that basically does all the work. It will normally be supplied pre-plugged into a good quality turned pin socket to protect it from damage during shipping. You can either solder the whole chip and socket assembly in as supplied, or unplug the chip, solder in the socket and then plug the chip back into it again.

The chip is polarity sensitive and the indent at one end must go in the direction shown on the PCB. The socket also has a matching indent.

This chip is what makes the whole module work. It's a PIC microcontroller programmed to full capacity with lean and efficient machine code (assembler). Using machine code was the only way that it was possible to give 16 million colour resolution while keeping the PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) fast enough to prevent flicker. It was also the only way to give the chip the intelligence to understand colour and be able to generate random colours in different palletes in real time.

It took me a long time to perfect the software to it's current level. All the colour generation and morphing algorithms are quite seriously interwoven to make them as lean and fast as possible and still leave room for some more frivolous and fun effects.